As far as first time accidents go, it was probably as ideal as it could have been. It was my first time riding with a passenger, and I had my good friend on the back so I could practice (not ideal for how small my bike is but hey it's something I thought I ought to learn how to do). I was joking with her before we rode off that if there ever was a time that I bin my bike, this would be it.

Lo and behold, we were going around a bend when I see the cars in front of me stop suddenly. I manage to stop the bike as smoothly and quickly as I can, but I still wasn't entirely used to how top heavy my bike was, and that combined with the heavy banking of the road we're on begins to tip us over to the left. I'm a pretty strong guy and my bike is quite light so I'm usually able to handle it quite easily, but we end up going past the point of no return and unceremoniously dumping ourselves off the bike going at a speed of 0 mph.

Luckily, the cars behind us stop and there was no one coming down the other way, so we quickly right the bike back up, bring it to the side of the road, and proceed to laugh at our misfortune. Turns out my words earlier proved prophetic. We ended up riding back from there. My friend now has a big bruise on her knee, and the bike has a little scraping on the fairing, clutch handle, handlebar, and mirror housing on the left side. I'm a little upset that the bike got scratched up, but mostly relieved that my friend wasn't more seriously hurt. Those scuffs will be reminders to me that the things I learned about maintaining safe stopping distance, not grabbing the brakes suddenly, etc. probably prevented the accident from being much worse than it could have been, but also that I still have a lot to learn and improve on, as I believe it was totally avoidable and ultimately 100% my fault.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Just wanted to share my little incident today. No one was seriously hurt, there were chuckles and laughter instead of crying and screaming, and my bike is still 100% rideable, if slightly scuffed up now. All in all, I'll take it. I feel really bad for hurting my friend; I'm going to try and take that feeling and use it to help me become a safer, better rider in the future.